If you grew up in a traditional church there’s a good chance that you may not have heard the gospel! We don’t mean to be critical of anyone but we have found that to be true.
- For example, if you were led to believe that you had to “be good” to receive God’s love or “be perfect” to keep God’s love…. that’s wasn’t the real gospel.
- If you have lived with a sense of guilt at not being able to overcome your personal faults or inadequacies and were told that it’s God’s will for you to feel bad about your shortcomings …you didn’t hear the real gospel.
- Or if you were told that God gets angry at you all over again when you don’t measure up to some standard of behavior….you didn’t hear the real gospel.
The real gospel is exactly what the Bible says: Christ paid for all of your sin as well as wiping away the guilt of having ever been a sinner. There is nothing you can do to deserve the free gift of God’s love and therefore nothing you can do to maintain it. Salvation is based on God’s unconditional love for you and not on your behavior.
So does your behavior matter? Of course it does. Sinning is a bad thing because it blocks YOU from receiving what God has already established for you in Christ. But there’s a world of difference between “behaving better” because God’s love has empowered you to make better choices versus behaving better because God won’t love you unless you do.
That’s the real gospel. And at Global Truth Ministries, that’s what we aim to preach and to live by God’s grace.